Echo Arena Open Beta Extended to MONDAY, JULY 17TH!

The team here at Ready At Dawn would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to you for participating in our second open beta. It’s been great hanging out with you in the lobby, seeing your feedback on Discord, the Echo Arena subreddit, and the Oculus forums, and getting our butts whooped by you in the arena!

As many of you know, our goal for this open beta was to further test some major network updates we made, our skill-based matchmaking, and our first iteration of the Echo Arena Party system. We definitely got the backend service testing we needed (still recovering from being hugged a little too hard), however during that time our devs were re-routed to debug and resolve those errors, which put the Party system on hold.

This extended open beta period will give the Echo Arena dev team time to further improve our backend services, and players to test out and provide feedback on the Party system. Additionally, you’ll get more time in Echo Arena to prep for launch day and hone your skills for the VR Challenger series, which we’ll be sharing more info about before too much longer.

Thank you again for all the support you’ve given us! We can’t wait to dive back into the arena with you over the next week, and again at launch on July 20th.

YAAAAAAAAAAY! I am sooooo happy thank you so much! I hope that the beta, launch, and post launch stuff treats you all well and I hope you all finally get some well-deserved rest; you are a kickass team and it shows!

but how can i cope with the 18th and 19th?........no echo arena.... wtg ready at dawn i salute you for making the oculus community happy with this masterpiece of multiplayer gaming. not since overwatch have i been so hyped to play a game and i thought no one could top that for me! thank you

Thanks so much guys. I am really enjoying this game so much and even took a half day yesterday just so i could play one more time but thankfully you have extended it I just need to figure why sometimes I cant hear anyone talk in game.

Well, there are still some features to roll out and tweak over the extended beta, and we'll probably all get a rank reset for the official launch. But yeah, we'll all be playing pretty much continuously from here on.

It'll be nice to have an invite system working so we can hook up with friends more easily. I'm also interested to see what final tweaks are made to the game play.

I was playing with curving my throw last night (hold A after throwing to curve towards the bottom of your controller), but I hear that's going to be removed. I can't seem to master the two-handed launch (gain more speed by doing a two-handed fling from the catapult). It would be nice to have a practice launch tube so I could work on it without messing up my team if I screw it up.

I've decided to order a third sensor after playing this game. Stick-turning is too much of a disadvantage for fast play, and I need to try to shift my playspace to the other end of the room so I have a little more space to spin around and swing my arms without punching my stuff so often.

Nalex, great choice! 3 is a must and I'm using 4 now and it's so much better being able to turn your body with complete freedom, at least until the wires tangle up. Can we get a Rift V2 soon with wireless video and tracking please? : )

You can really see the influx of new Rift users! Echo Arena tonight was full of Level 1 players who had just gotten their Rifts. I spent a good part of my play session just hanging out in the lobby and showing people the ropes, shooting the shit, goofing around, and generally having a good time. Fun!

Has somebody made a video showing actual multiplayer gameplay? The only videos I've been able to find on YouTube show a run through of the tutorial, which is fairly self-explanatory. I haven't been able to figure out how to get changes to my appearance to "stick" or how other players are able to communicate with each other verbally.

Has somebody made a video showing actual multiplayer gameplay? The only videos I've been able to find on YouTube show a run through of the tutorial, which is fairly self-explanatory. I haven't been able to figure out how to get changes to my appearance to "stick" or how other players are able to communicate with each other verbally.

Any customization you do should just apply automatically and stick without doing anything else. As far as communication, you just talk. The Rift mic is always on, so everyone in the vicinity should be able to hear you.

I finally loaded this up! I I went through the tutorial and after completing everything, I was happy to see that I had experienced zero motion sickness. Impressive considering the weightlessness aspect of the game. In contrast to Adr1ft where I had to really pace myself to avoid getting a headache.

I do like how the tutorial immediately launched me in to the multiplayer lobby upon completion. People were darting around talking, laughing, and playing various practice games. I spent some time getting to know this area; I especially enjoy the "ceiling" compartments where players can dart through the walls.

I tried customizing my character by changing my color (to blue), but I couldn't tell if my changes had taken effect.

I may not be able to jump back in tonight, but I plan to spend as much time as possible tomorrow during the day (while I wait for the Game of Thrones premiere).

But so far, even with having only experienced the basics thus far... super impressed.

The robot in the middle of the Customization room shows what your changes look like, and you should be able to look at your own arms and legs to see that they've taken effect. There are three skins to customize--Social for the lobby, and Orange and Blue for the look you'll have in matches (you get randomly assigned to the Orange or Blue teams for each match).